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Seventeen-year-old Marcus Yallow circumvents his San Francisco high school’s clumsy surveillance with ease, but when a terrorist attack blows up the Bay Bridge, Marcus and his friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), imprisoned, and interrogated. Once Marcus is freed, he finds that his city now resembles a police state, with privacy and security being sacrificed in the name of freedom. In response to this crackdown, Marcus uses all the technology skills at his disposal to take down the unethical DHS. Doctorow keeps the plot moving swiftly forward, and packs a significant amount of information, from history to hacking, into the story without making it seem like a lecture. Little Brother is riveting in its pacing, characters, and the story’s twists and turns, and it is as thought-provoking as any dystopia before it or after. A real page-turner, great for young adults especially.

If you like to keep up with the newest titles but don't have time to check the teen shelves, check with the Teen Zone on GoodReads.com. In addition to listing all of the latest additions, we're tagging things with notes about formats (like which are audio books, graphic novels, etc) and even a tag for Librarian's Favorites, and providing reviews of some titles. Friend us to stay informed or comment on some of your own favorites, or just follow on your own.

The HBO series Treme is set in post-Katrina New Orleans. The show focuses on how residents are coping with the aftermath of the storm and the difficulties they face from destroyed homes, lack of basic utilities and city services that are in disarray. The characters represent a wide cross-section of the population and provide an interesting tableau. It may take a few episodes to get a feel for the many characters but the time spent is well worth it. In all the episodes there is music and plenty of it. If you enjoy the sounds of New Orleans jazz and funk, this show will not disappoint. The show’s creators first worked together on the hit series The Wire and many actors from that series appear in Treme.

Hadley Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife (of five), narrates this tale of their relationship, their friends, and the city in which they live. Author Paula McLain does an impressive job of bringing not just the characters, but the atmosphere of the time and place to life as well: the Jazz Age of Paris in the 1920s. Readers encounter literary legends Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, is also a character, and his final wife Mary makes a brief appearance as well. Hadley grows in strength and independence through the years, and as the title suggests, the story is more hers than Hemingway’s. This is a great book for fans of history and literature – and for those who like neat endings, an epilogue describes Hadley’s and Ernest’s last contact, in May 1961.

The subtitle of MWF Seeking BFF (“married white female seeking best friend forever”) is my yearlong search for a new best friend, and that’s exactly the mission Bertsche chronicles here: her year-long project to find a best friend in a new city. After leaving her lifelong best friends behind in New York and moving to Chicago with her husband, Bertsche decides she needs a local best friend, and the best way to find “the one,” she determines, is to go on 52 “friend dates” throughout the year. The narrative is infused with the author’s bubbling personality, and she includes research on friendship; MWF Seeking BFF is similar to Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project in this way, though this is a less rigorous, more fun read. Recommended for anyone who’s ever had to move to a new place and make new friends, but especially for women in their 20s and 30s.

Faith is told mostly in the first person from the point of view of Sheila, whose older half-brother Art, a priest, is accused of child molestation in Boston in 2002. Sheila believes he is innocent; her younger brother Mike is less sure; their mother can't bear to speak of it. Haigh conveys the intricate emotional balances of the family and the Boston Irish Catholic community beautifully; there is much more to the story than the newspapers report, and Sheila discovers and relates it all to the reader. Haigh handles the sensitive subject matter deftly and unflinchingly. This is a unique book.

We have been proud to host 5 School Nights at the library this spring. Over 500 people have attended these evening open houses which featured raffle drawings, a scavenger hunt, and guest readers. Many thanks to the school principals, teachers, librarians, and reading specialists for making the evenings such a success.